So, the characters made in C.C.2 have the option to be converted to use the the new edge loop, and glitches in animation they have fixed in the new base mesh. Without any loss of morph shape, or detail? Simply put, will the converted C.C.2 characters will look like the same, and not have to do the morphs/details over again?

     That's EXACTLY how I feel right now! I was in the middle of creating new characters, remaking older ones, and creating new clothing/accessories for said characters. Then I recently seen the C.C.3 - W.I.P. #1 video on YouTube. The new, improved quad-based base mesh is quite welcome since it's closer to what I do in Blender. Yet, it also makes me feel like I should hold off on making new/remastered human characters since I'll just have to remake them in C.C.3 like you stated. Since, the old ones I doubt would be converted to use the the new edge loop, and glitches in animation they have fixed in the new base mesh.
     That feeling of futility was driven deeper by seeing the "OBJ import/Auto-Skinning" feature. Especially considering the number of hurdles I've stumbled over, and hoops I've attempted to jump through trying to get the new clothing/accessories successfully imported into C.C.2 from Blender. I think the accessories can still be exported, and attached/linked to the various places on ANY model, but the clothes... I'll probably just export out the clothes as OBJ files in preparation for use in C.C.3 though. Maybe the wait will give me time to perfect PBR texturing.

I'm also not in favor of a single map, although I agree that the blending between head and neck could be better. The default maps are just that, but the maps from the 100 Heads collection or those made with CT8 are much better. I just wished larger part would be devoted to the front of the face to improve resolution/details.

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Hmmm....I like your first part about the realistic texture itself very much!...
However the second part, with the neck and collar bone, I myself would not be a fan of that outright, where in all situations a character's head map would also be connected to neck and collar map.  

BUT - what you are touching on is fascinating!  Maybe you could have an option to have a uni vs multi texture character?  And you could, as creator, set the dividing point of that texture sequence? 
So, when completed, you could have a head mat, a neck mat, a torso/arms mat, and then a leg mat (total 4), to preserve detail.  Or you could have one mat (total 1), to preserve functionality. 
(With the 2 we currently see, think RL was trying to balance detail vs usability...but what if WE could decide!)  

**RL - How about if in CC3 you could start off with a new texture mapper function where
(a) at beginning, you could splice it up into as many mats as you want (with a 'divider' of some sort, both horizontal and vertical)...and then, after crafting your avatar also
(b) have the power to merge textures into one mat before export, as an option, thereby reducing the file size of that avatar! 

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"Less clicks good, more clicks bad."

I hope the road map takes us to "more realistic textures city" - right now they look too hand painted... I managed to re-texture a CC model with DAZ image maps and the CC character looked far better (but too much work to make a habit of it).  Also, a rethink on texture map optimization would be useful too... surely a entire 'nude' character could be on one set of texture maps/opacity/roughness etc.  At the very least, make the "head map" include the neck and collar bones area to get rid of the resolution drop between the face and neck line.

Ha! So this arrogant conceit, from which so many suffer daily, now has a name! I expect it will soon have an acronym of its own.

Thank you.



"Less clicks good, more clicks bad."

I assume when you say (hint) that Houdini would be useful for hair you mean IF somehow iClone supported that -- which it does not (at least not in the way you can currently use Marvelous Designer for clothes and import into CC/iClone).  At the moment the only tool I know of for actually creating polygonal hair (the only hair supported by CC) is the Blender Hair addon that I'm using -- and I admit while it works nicely it's not anything that couldn't be improved (although the designer is constantly working on it).

And I agree with you that Anima is lacking in many aspects -- the fact that it was specifically designed for architectural walk-throughs really hurts it in this regard.  I have it, and while I find it useful at times it's not exactly what I would have hoped for.  I'm still holding out a *bit* of hope that eventually Python for iClone will allow us to create our own such processes, but since they've already said the first pass will be very limited I'm not sure I'll live long enough to see it come to fruition.

I know you spoke of period clothes and hair from a long-term standpoint, but I'd argue that even things only a few years removed aren't supported well.  Trying to do something from the 50's, for example, is a real PITA (I've finally been able to get the look but only by importing a whole lot of Daz clothing and hair).  I'm not sure where to point any fingers of blame, though, because the market is driven by need, and pretty obviously not a lot of folks are interested in much beyond now and the future.

However, careful combing of the Daz and Renderosity catalogs can turn up a lot of period stuff, all the way back to cavemen times, so if you are patient and work with it, it can be done.  While it will be (I assume) easier with CC3, there's no reason you have to wait -- it takes only minutes to import any of this stuff (clothing or hair) into CC now.

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Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

@animagic
I suggest that you meant  'clothes-making' and, yeah, hair making.

Marvellous Designer (MD) for one and Houdini (SideFX.com) for the other but both are expensive and have steep learning curves.(Houdini has a lower-resolution free version rather awkward to use.)

You might add on a crowd-simulator to supply extras, but the existing ones that I have seen - like 3DS Max and Anima from AXYZ Design - produce at the moment only atomistic crowds where every individual is by themselves. This is not characteristic of any real crowd, Real crowds are in ones, twos and threes of differing ages and genders with some disabled, families, couples, children etc.

My issue is that all of the samples and clips I have seen in both clothes and hair emphasise - to the exclusion of all other periods in history - the present.

It is as if nothing happened before the World-Wide Web!  This is the fallacy of presentism. cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis).

Clothes and hair give you an instant bit of set dressing for your movie scene that tells you what period you are in and what  geographical area you are in. There is no other way to get this instant hit.

But I would suggest that most movie-makers do not want to be all the professions that get name-checked on the screen credits at the end of a movie. If you want Italian Renaissance clothing or 18th century European breeches and wigs you probably do not want to get into the degree of detail that MD requires. If you want 19th century luxuriant facial hair you probably do not want to get it just right for every single different face in your scene. The legendary EZ key may not be available but a marketplace surely could come into existence assuming sufficient demand. Even if it called for premium pricing for conforming clothes and hair of a given period.

Home Built in Coolermaster ATX case with GigabyteGA-Z170X-GAMING 7 MoBo, i7-6700 @ 3.4 Ghz, Asus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GraphicsCard, 32Gb DDR4 RAM, an Acer CB241HQK  & a Samsung S24D300 monitor, Huion H610Pro Graphics Tablet, Kinect v2, Logitech C920 Webcam, Win 10 64 Bit OS

 demand.

A more-tightly integrated "cloth-making for dummies" option would be nice too...:unsure: And a hair maker! :w00t:

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